The spindle speed of the hard drive. Examining the spindle speed of the hard drive

Good afternoon, dear readers, today I want to touch on this topic, what is hard disk spindle speed how to determine it, and understand which speed is good and which is not. I think it will be interesting for novice engineers of data storage systems, since the performance of storage systems will depend on the understanding of this topic, namely how much your disk array can carry on itself, without brakes and accidents. At the time of the beginning of my career, I did not have enough of this information in the Russian-speaking segment and that everything was structured, so I ask you to love and favor.

Spindle speed

Each of us wants all of its services and equipment to work quickly, and to put in their storage systems, not everyone has the opportunity to stick fast SSD drives, and the only solution is hard drives. When evaluating the performance of hard drives, the most important characteristic is the data transfer rate. At the same time, a number of factors affect speed and overall performance:

• The first factor is through which interface you connect the hard drive, the choice of SATA / IDE / SCSI / SAS, it is logical that each of them has its own data transfer rate. SCSI can transfer data up to 80 megabytes / sec, IDE latest versions can support data transfer rates up to 133 MB / sec, SATA up to 6 Gbps, SAS up to 12 Gbps.
• The size of the cache or buffer on the hard drive. Increasing the buffer size increases the data transfer rate.
• Support for NCQ, TCQ and other algorithms to improve performance
• Disk volume, the more data can be written, the more time it takes to read the information.
• Density of information on the plates.
• And even the file system affects the speed of data exchange.

But there is another factor affecting the performance of the screws and that is the spindle speed of the hard drive. If you take two identical HDDs, but with different spindle speeds, then you will see a difference in performance, and at what a significant

HDD device

Let's take a look at the physical structure of hard drives in order to understand what parts it consists of.

• Reading head
• Solenoid drive
• Spindle
• Plate
• Nutrition
• Connection interface

• Read / write head
• Permanent magnet
• Positioner rotary frame
• Head-block preamplifier switch

What is a spindle

Winchester is a set of one or more sealed disc-shaped plates covered with a layer of ferromagnetic material and readheads in one housing. The plates are driven by a spindle (rotating shaft). The platters of the hard disk are fixed to the spindle at a strictly defined distance. When the platters rotate, the distance should be such that the read heads can read and write to the disk, but do not touch the platter surface.

The spindle motor must be able to rotate the magnetic platters steadily for thousands of hours for the disk to function properly. Unsurprisingly, sometimes disk problems are related to a jammed spindle, and are not errors in the file system at all.

The motor is responsible for the rotation of the platters, and this allows the hard drive to run. Due to the lack of contact, the hard drive can be rewritten on average 100 thousand times. Also, the operating time of the disk is influenced by the hermetically sealed case (hermetic zone), due to which a space is created inside the HDD case free of dust and moisture.

This is what the spindles look like; for each manufacturer, they may look slightly different in appearance. These are the spindles from Samsung screws.

or here's another selection.

spindle speed, or in Russian, the spindle rotation speed, determines how fast the plates rotate in normal hard disk operation. It is measured in RpM, that is, revolutions per minute. The RpM speed will depend on how fast your computer will work, namely how quickly the computer can receive data from the hard drive.

How many times have I seen brake laptops that had 4 GB of RAM each, there was an Intel core i3 or even an i5 processor, but there was a damn hdd with a rotation speed of 5400 rpm, and it was a complete rub, such screws need to be pulled out immediately and installing ssd otherwise it was not possible to work

The time it takes for the head unit to go to the requested track / cylinder is called search time (seek latency or delay) ... After the read heads move to the desired track / cylinder, we must wait for the plates to turn so that the desired sector is under the head - this is rotational latency time. And this is a direct function of the spindle speed. That is, the faster the spindle speed, the less the rotation delay.

The total seek time delays and rotation delays determine the speed of data access. In many programs for estimating the speed of hdd, this will be the access to data time parameter. You can read more about s.m.a.r.t indicators by following the link on the left.

The influence of the spindle speed of the hard disk

Winchesters come in two formats LFF and SFF, in a nutshell, one has a format of 2.5 inches, and the other 3.5. The 2.5 format most often goes either in servers or in laptops, and the second also in servers and ordinary system units.

If you look at the average speed of standard 3.5 "hard drives, then this is a spindle speed of 7200 rpm. The average half-turn time (Avg. Rotational Latency) for such drives is 4.2 ms. These drives usually have an average seek time of about 8.5ms, which gives an average data access time of about 12.7ms.

There are discs that have a rotational speed of the magnetic platters of 10,000 rpm. This reduces the average spin delay time to 3ms. The Raptors also have smaller diameter plates, which made it possible to reduce the average search time to ~ 5.5 ms. The resulting average data access time is approximately 8.5 ms.

There are several SCSI models (such as the Seagate Cheetah) that have a spindle speed of 15,000 rpm, and even smaller platters. The average Rotational Latency is 2ms (60 sec / 15,000 RPM / 2), the average seek time is 3.8ms, and the average data access time is 5.8ms.

Discs with high spindle speeds have low seek times and rotational latency even with random access. Hard drives with a spindle speed of 5600 and 7200 have lower performance.

At the same time, with sequential access to data in large blocks, the difference will be insignificant, since there will be no delay in accessing data, therefore it is recommended to regularly defragment hard disks.

At 2.5 colleagues, the speed also jumps from 5400 to 15000 rpm.

Determine the speed of rotation of the spindle of the hard disk

Here I will not open America for you, the spindle speed of the hard disk is determined, not just that simple, but very simply, there are two options. If you have the opportunity to physically look at the label located on the disk, then you can see this RPM in these examples is 7200RPM.

If you have a hard disk in a device or server, then we will look at the spindle speed of the hard disk in special programs, of which there are a lot, I can advise

• crystalmark
• aida64
• speccy

Of course, the higher the spindle speed, the faster the disc, but there is also a downside to the coin, as the rotational speed of the plates increases, the disc heats up more and becomes noisier. This can be offset by technology, WD IntelliPower, which reduces power consumption and noise by reducing spindle speed. And the loss of performance is partially compensated by optimizing caching algorithms. A similar technology in HGST is called CoolSpin in order to reduce power consumption.

conclusions

I think you are once again convinced that, if possible, you need to switch to solid-state drives, since they have many advantages.

• Do not heat up
• There are no mechanical parts, if it falls, then nothing will happen to it
• The speed is many times faster
• More durable
• But, unfortunately, they have a smaller volume and are still more expensive, although this line is decreasing every year.

Introduction

2.5 "7200 RPM hard drives belong to a rather unique sector of the market, both in terms of performance and their application. The performance of such models has always been higher than that of 2.5" drives, but with 5400 rpm, but less than that of large 3.5 "drives. The latter, however, is a rather controversial issue: the lower speed of sequential read and write operations of large files was well compensated by the lower response time. Why lower, because the rotational speed of the platters is the same? Yes, simply because, due to the smaller diameter of the plates, the heads have to move to a smaller angle when searching (of course, we are talking about averaged values), spending less time on this operation. But the volume of 2.5 "disks with a rotation speed of 7200 rpm / min has always been relatively small, less than the 5400 rpm models. The reason for this is that at high rotational speeds of the plates, it is more difficult to ensure the correct operation of the heads in the zones with maximum density. So, while engineers were solving this problem of interaction between platters and heads, moving from 100 GB platters to 160 GB on disks with 7200 rpm, models with 5400 rpm switched to 250 GB platters, respectively, increasing the total volume. and the speed of work. So in this pair, the superiority of the 7200 rpm models has become far from obvious.

As for the area of ​​application of 2.5 "hard drives with a rotation speed of 7200 rpm, it is not very wide, but at the same time quite stable. The combination of small size, reasonable power consumption and good performance guarantees them a place in the most productive notebooks - usually these are models with screens of large (17 "and higher) diagonals, high-performance processors and powerful video cards, which are almost a complete replacement for desktop computers. It is quite logical that the disk subsystem in them should be the best available, especially since the cost of the other components is such that the increased price of disks is not very noticeable against its background. In simpler notebooks, manufacturers prefer to use drives with 5400 rpm - they are both cheaper and more economical. Another area of ​​application for our test subjects is in compact servers requiring multi-disk arrays. And again, low power consumption, high speed, low response time and compact size - all these features are serious advantages of 2.5 "hard drives with a rotation speed of 7200 rpm. And finally, do not forget about another area of ​​application of such hard drives: compact and quiet desktop computers. Like all 2.5 "drives, models with 7200 rpm are noticeably quieter than their older counterparts in the standard 3.5" form factor.

Unfortunately, such drives are rarely available in retail: the demand for them is not very high, and most of the drives produced go directly to laptop and server manufacturers. It should also be noted the sad practice of "paper" announcements: press releases and information on the site appear long before the actual distribution of discs.

Test participants

Seagate Momentus 7200.3, 320 GB: ST9320421ASG

Seagate regularly updates the 2.5 "series of 7200 rpm hard drives. Each transition to higher density platters causes an increase in the last digit of the series, as happened this time: to replace 7200.2 series drives with 100 GB platters (we they were considered in our previous article) came the 7200.3 series. The increase in density also led to a corresponding 1.5-fold increase in the volume of the older model. It is curious that now not only the older models, but all the disks in the series have received a cache of 16 MB.

By the way, the next series, Seagate Momentus 7200.4, in which the data recording density is 250 GB per platter, has long been announced. But, judging by their absence in stores, we have before us another "paper" announcement. So we will be content with 7200.3 series drives for now.

Western Digital Scorpio Black, 320 GB: WD3200BEKT

But Western Digital is a newcomer to this market sector: for a long time it was limited to the production of 2.5 "discs only with a rotational speed of 5400 rpm platters. But some time ago, a very successful series of Western Digital Scorpio compact discs split into two branches: Scorpio Blue, with 5400 rpm, and Scorpio Black, which received disks with 7200 rpm. All models of the "fast" series are equipped with 16 MB of buffer memory and are currently built only on 160 GB platters. The younger model uses one side of one platter and has a volume of 80 GB, the older one, on two platters, can accommodate 320 GB.

Like 2.5 "discs from other companies, Western Digital has versions with an acceleration sensor, which provides quick parking of the disc heads in the event of a fall, which provides additional protection from mechanical damage. It is easy to distinguish such models: the second letter symbol at the end of their designation is “J”, while regular models have “E.” By the way, all Scorpio Black discs have a third letter symbol - “K”, while Scorpio Blue has “V”.

Before starting testing, we traditionally provide the characteristics and firmware versions of the participants:

We tried to find the widest possible set of competitors for the subjects. From 2.5 "drives, it includes two previous generation 7200 rpm models (on 100 GB platters) and the fastest 5400 rpm drive we have seen so far.

Curiously, Western Digital announced the same average read seek time for the Scorpio Black as for the Scorpio Blue. Could it really be that the increase in the rotational speed of the platters really did nothing to this disk? Let's check.

For the sake of completeness, we also took two 3.5 "models of the same size from the series of the latest generation. Due to the larger platters in modern 3.5" disks, 320 GB can be fully accommodated on one platter, and not two, as in 2.5 "models. And again, the average seek time is noteworthy: according to Seagate, it is the same for compact and large drives, while Western Digital's 3.5" model searches for data two milliseconds longer.

Please note that almost all participants, with the exception of Western Digital Scorpio Blue, have 16MB of buffer memory. Yes, if 2.5 "drives with 5400 rpm still manage mainly with eight megabytes of buffer memory, then on models with 7200 rpm 16 MB is already a typical characteristic, as well as on their 3.5" brothers.

Testing technique

During testing, the following programs were used:

IOMeter version 2003.02.15;
IOMark 0.30b14;
FC-Test version 1.0;
PCMark 2004;
PCMark 2005;
PCMark Vantage.

The test system was as follows:

ASUSTeK P5WDG2 WS Pro mainboard;
Intel Core 2 Duo E2160 processor;
IBM DTLA-307015 15 GB hard drive as a system drive;
video card Radeon X600;
1 GB of 800 MHz DDR2 system memory;
Operating system Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2.

Testing was carried out with basic operating system drivers. The drives were partitioned under the FAT32 and NTFS file systems in one partition with the default cluster size. In some cases, described below, for testing we used logical partitions of 32 GB, partitioned under FAT32 and NTFS with the default cluster size. The drives were connected to the Promise SATA300 TX4302 controller installed in the PCI-X slot, and, if necessary, were switched from the "quiet" operating mode (that is, from the mode when Advanced Acoustic Management - AAM is activated) to the normal one.

IOMark

For the low-level benchmarks, we used our internal IOMark benchmark. Let's start with a linear reading.
Let's compare disks in terms of the demonstrated read speeds at the beginning and end of the partitions obtained on the entire disk space:

If we compare the new items on 160 GB platters with the previous generation of disks, then the progress is easy to notice: the density increased by one and a half times gave an increase in linear speed by about a quarter. Curiously, the Seagate 7200.3 is noticeably faster than the Western Digital Scorpio Black, both at the beginning of the disc and at the end. At the same time, accessing the graphs directly does not change the picture: the speed of both drives leaps strongly depending on how successful the surface-head pair is used to read, but in general Seagate is faster. It looks like its recording density will be somewhat higher, and there is still room for growth. As a result, while Scorpio Black lags behind its "blue" counterpart with a lower rotational speed of platters, but a higher recording density, then Seagate turns out to be noticeably faster than both Western Digital drives. But it is also unable to catch up with the 3.5 "models of the latest generation (by the way, in them Seagate also turns out to be faster than the Western Digital disk).

How do we work with buffer memory?

Judging by the diagram, the picture is quite simple: the disks of the previous generation are limited by the interface bandwidth, while the new generation runs on a full-fledged SATA300 and is not inferior to their big brothers. Seagate drives would have won with a slight advantage in this test, but don't be lazy and look at the graphs. Both for reading and writing, Seagate (both the desktop 7200.11 series and the compact 7200.3, which indicates the similarity of the firmware), the speeds grow sharply and reach a maximum on a block of 256 sectors, that is, 128 kB. After that, we see a sharp and significant decline, especially on the record, followed by a gradual rise. There will also be performance peaks at block sizes that are multiples of 256 sectors, but there is no need to wait for high values: the read speed remains consistently below 200 MB / s, and the write speed is slightly above 100 MB / s. Western Digital disks also have a peak on a block of 256 sectors, but the decline after it is very insignificant. So, according to the results of this test, our preferences remained on the side of Western Digital.

IOMeter: Sequential Read & Write

After the low-level tests, let's move on to the tests in IOMeter. The first, as always, will be sequential operations. In this test, a stream of requests is sent to hard disks with a command queue depth of four. The size of the data block increases once per minute. As a result, we get the opportunity to trace the dependence of linear read and write speeds of drives on the size of the data blocks used and estimate the maximum achievable speeds.

Here and further you can see the numerical results of measurements in the corresponding tables, if you wish, but we will work with graphs and diagrams.

Yes, the increased density gives new discs a noticeable speed advantage over older discs. According to the maximum demonstrated speeds, all the disks are arranged in the same order as in the low-level reading. But what we could not see above is the sequential read speed in small blocks. Here Seagate 7200.3 is beyond competition - it outperforms not only all 2.5 "drives, including the Western Digital Scorpio Blue, but also both 3.5" drives participating in our test. The situation in the Western Digital camp is curious: two "scorpions" demonstrate equal speeds on large blocks, but on small blocks, the Scorpio Black takes the lead.

On the sequential recording, the picture changes a little: now on small blocks Western Digital discs with Scorpio Black at the head are unconditionally reigning. At the same time, the latter loses to Scorpio Blue and Seagate 7200.3 on large blocks.

IOMeter: Disk Response Time

To measure the response time, we use IOMeter to send a stream of requests to disks to read or write data blocks of 512 bytes for ten minutes with the outgoing request queue depth equal to one. The number of requests processed by the drive exceeds sixty thousand, so we get the well-established response time of the drive, regardless of the size of its cache buffer.

Judging by the response time on reading, 2.5 "disks of the previous generation with 7200 rpm still have enough powder in the flasks - they won this test. Next, with some lag, are the new 2.5" models (with Scorpio Black overtook the Momentus 7200.3 by half a second), but the 3.5 "hard drives hit the very end. Yes, the small diameter of the platters and the associated smaller angular movements of the head unit provide 2.5" drives with a noticeable advantage: even a drive with 5400 rpm wins from the "big brothers".

On write, the response time is determined by the efficiency of the lazy write algorithms. If we judge the disks precisely by the response, then 2.5 "Western Digital disks will take the lead, and if by the efficiency of the algorithms (which can be closely compared by how many times the response to writes is less than that of reading), then 3 will win, 5 "drives, with a clear advantage of the Seagate 7200.11. But 2.5 "Seagate drives of both generations do not shine in any way of comparison - their response to writing is much higher than that of the others, with a completely normal reading response.

IOMeter: Random Read & Write

Let us now estimate the dependence of the performance of disks in read and write modes with random addressing on the size of the data block used.

We will consider the results in two versions. On blocks of small size, we will plot the dependence of the number of operations per second on the size of the used block. And on large blocks, instead of the number of operations, we take the speed in megabytes per second as a performance criterion. This approach allows us to evaluate the work of arrays in two typical load cases at once: work in small blocks is typical for databases, and for it the number of operations per second is more important than the usual speed, but work in large and very large blocks is close to real work with small files sizes, and here it is the speed in the usual megabytes per second that comes to the fore.

Let's start with reading.

When reading in small blocks with arbitrary addressing, we see a somewhat strange picture: the first two places were taken by disks of the previous generation, and their gap from the newcomers is quite large. Apparently, this is the flip side of the increased recording density - it takes more time to find the required point on the disc. In general, 2.5 "7200 rpm drives are noticeably faster than both their 5400 rpm siblings and 3.5" drives. By the way, about the latter: Seagate 7200.11 looks rather sad compared to the others.

As the block size grows to one megabyte and above, the sequential read speed begins to play a decisive role, so 3.5 "hard drives are expected to pull ahead, the old generation lags behind, and the Seagate 7200.3 noticeably outperforms Western Digital Scorpio Black.

For writing in small blocks, the efficiency of the lazy write plays a major role. As a result, we have a rather amusing picture: such different drives as the Seagate 7200.11 and Western Digital Scorpio Blue have taken the lead. As for the heroes of our review, the Scorpio Black keeps very close to the leaders, while the Momentus 7200.3 is the last, and even lost a lot to its predecessor, the Seagate Monentus 7200.2 disk. Apparently, the "fast" compact Seagate series with caching failed, and the further - the more.

On large blocks, the speed of linear operations again starts to play a leading role - the disks are lined up almost in full accordance with the results of the "IOMeter: Sequential Write" test.

IOMeter: Database

With the help of the "Database" test, we find out the ability of drives to work with streams of requests for reading and writing 8-KB blocks of data with random addressing. During testing, there is a sequential change in the percentage of write requests from zero to one hundred percent (in 10% increments) of the total number of requests and an increase in the command queue depth from 1 to 256.

You can see the table with test results at the following link:.

Consider the diagrams showing the results for command queue depths of 1, 16, and 256.

With the minimum queue depth, all Western Digital drives are in a very dense group in the leading positions, with two 2.5 "drives competing for the title of the winner, while Caviar Blue is slightly behind. Only with a large number of read operations they are slightly bypassed by two 2.5" drives of the past. generations with 7200 rpm, Hitachi 7K200 and Seagate 7200.2. Seagate compact discs clearly demonstrate their high response time to write - their performance is lower than that of the rest of the participants with the predominance of write requests, and the new 7200.3 is very noticeably inferior to its predecessor. What is this, regression instead of progress in the evolution of firmware?

With an increase in the load to 16 commands in the queue, a reordering of read requests appears, plus all algorithms work more efficiently, since the disks are loaded fairly evenly and densely. WD Scorpio Black is already taking the first place - its superiority is only slightly contested in the "clean" recording zone. The Seagate 7200.3 demonstrates an excellent reordering of requests, when only read requests come to it, getting out in second place, but on all other loads it has very low performance, outperforming everyone else (yes, even its very average 7200.2 predecessor). It is clearly seen that with the prevalence of read requests, 2.5 "are noticeably faster than 3.5" disks (the same Scorpio Blue, with its 5400 rpm, quite successfully fights against Caviar Blue) ..

Further increasing the load to 256 queued commands results in a more vivid demonstration of disk behavior. Unexpectedly, delayed write "wakes up" in Seagate drives, but if in 2.5 "models it is rather sluggish, then 3.5" Seagate 7200.11 simply shoots out in the area with a predominance of write requests. As for the rest, no change in the ranks of the leaders: WD Scorpio Black confidently takes the first place, having a solid lead over the pursuers, and the rest of the prizes are shared by Caviar Blue and Scorpio Blue. Seagate 7200.3 catches up to the others in terms of performance, but nothing more - it is still the last one.

Completing this set of tests, let's build diagrams for two heroes of our review, which show graphs of five different queue depths.

Seagate Momentus 7200.3 clearly has NCQ algorithms and is quite well developed, judging by the left side of the graphs. But his deferred recording is very, very modest.

Western Digital, it seems, acted on the principle of "do not look for good" and used the well-proven firmware in the drive, which we have already seen several times in the reviews of 2.5 "drives with 5400 rpm. And you can understand it: great algorithms reordering of queries, efficient lazy writing, good scalability of performance with increasing load, no problematic load combinations - it's worth looking at.

IOMeter: Webserver, Fileserver and Workstation

In this group of tests, disks operate under loads typical of servers and workstations.

Let me remind you that "Webserver" and "Fileserver" emulate the operation of a drive in the respective servers, while in "Workstation" we simulate the operation of a disk in a typical load mode for a workstation, with a maximum queue depth limited to 32 requests. Testing in "Workstation" is carried out both with the use of the entire disk space of the drive, and when working only with the address space of 32 GB.

Based on the data obtained, we will build graphs and final diagrams with ratings of hard disk performance.

For "Fileserver" and "Webserver", the total score will be calculated as the average value of the speed of processing requests by the controller for all load cases. For "Workstation" the score is calculated using the following formula: Rating (Workstation) = Total I / O (queue = 1) / 1 + Total I / O (queue = 2) / 2 + Total I / O (queue = 4) / 4 + Total I / O (queue = 8) / 8 + Total I / O (queue = 16) / 16..

As a disk-based server that only handles read requests, the Western Digital Scorpio Black is unmatched due to its fast read response time and efficient reordering of requests. However, the new Seagate 7200.3 is not so bad either, and it is favorably distinguished from its predecessor by the absence of a dip at medium loads.

The rating clearly shows that 2.5 "drives with the same rotational speed of the platters clearly win in read operations. But a decrease in speed to 5400 rpm leads to a parity of forces.

Adding write requests to the load leads to interesting changes. Scorpio Black is still uncompromisingly in the lead, but Scorpio Blue unexpectedly comes into second place - the efficient work of its delayed recording and high density allow it to successfully leave behind a cohort of discs with faster platters. The weak delayed recording in the Seagate 7200.3 also becomes noticeable - it loses a lot to its predecessor ... and indeed, practically to all rivals.

The gap between Western Digital Scorpio is very large, according to the results of this and the previous test, it can be safely recommended to all owners of thin servers who want to assemble a disk subsystem on inexpensive 2.5 "SATA hard drives.

But under the workstation load, the Scorpio Black is inferior to the Seagate drive. True, the latter belongs to the 7200.2 series, while the 7200.3 demonstrates lower results and competes only with WD Scorpio Blue.

Pay attention, 3.5 "drives took the last places. Perhaps the tests in PCMark will change the picture, but so far the 2.5" models turn out to be better than their larger counterparts, losing to them only at maximum sequential operations.

Reducing the working area to 32 GB knocks the disks into a dense heap, from which only the Seagate 7200.11, which had not been shining before, stands out with unexpectedly high results - apparently, its very high speeds at the very beginning of the disk affected.

Curiously, in this test the Seagate 7200.3 is somewhat inferior to the rather old Momentus 7200.2. Density - density, but you must not forget about the firmware.

IOMeter: Multi-thread Read & Write

This test allows you to evaluate the behavior of hard drives under multi-threaded load. In the course of it, the situation is emulated when from one to four applications are working with the drive, and the number of requests from them varies from one to eight, and the address spaces of each application, the roles of which are performed by workers in IOMeter, do not overlap.

If you wish, you can see tables with full test results by following the corresponding links, and as the most indicative, we will consider the write and read diagrams for situations with a queue depth of one request, since when the number of requests in the queue is equal to two or more, the speed values ​​are practically not depend on the number of applications.

On a single read stream, everything is obviously determined by the linear speed, so 3.5 "disks are unmatched here, and the last ones naturally turn out to be 2.5" disks of the previous generation with a very low recording density. The emergence of the second stream leads to a sharp change in the leaders: they are 2.5 "Western Digital drives with similar firmware, and the Seagate 7200.3. The situation persists even with a further increase in the number of streams, and only when there are four of them, it changes slightly: it suddenly loses ground WD Caviar Blue, and Seagate 7200.11 increases the speed and takes the second place.It is gratifying to see that in the new firmware Seagate got rid of the annoying error, which has long been the hallmark of this firm's drives and is clearly visible in the behavior of the Seagate Momentus 7200.2 - extremely low multithreading speed. reading.

But on multi-threaded recording with several streams, WD Caviar Blue managed to maintain its high results, in contrast to the Seagate 7200.11. Our newcomers also look very good, with varying degrees of success fighting for the second and third places.

FC-Test

Next up in our testing program is the FileCopy Test. Two partitions of 32 GB are allocated on the hard disk, which are partitioned in two stages of testing, first in NTFS, and then in FAT32, after which a certain set of files is created on the partition, read, copied within the partition and copied from partition to partition. The time of all these operations is recorded. Recall that the sets "Windows" and "Programs" include a large number of small files, while the other three templates ("MP3", "ISO" and "Install") are characterized by a smaller number of larger files, and in the "ISO" the largest files are used.

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the copy test not only tells about the copying speed within one disk, but also allows you to judge its behavior under a complex load. In fact, during copying, the disk simultaneously works with two streams, one of them for reading, and the other for writing.

Since there are quite a lot of results, we will consider in detail only the values ​​achieved on the "Install", "ISO" and "Programs" file sets in NTFS, covering the entire range of file sizes typical for everyday use of the hard drive. You can find out the rest of the results from the tables below:

It would seem that linear file recording is a joy for 3.5 "drives, but not everything is so simple. The first place is really taken by WD Caviar Blue, but the" quiet "WD Scorpio Blue unexpectedly took the second place on all sets of files, and the third - Scorpio Black Seagate disks behave unexpectedly modestly, that the "large" 7200.11, that the compact 7200.3 The latter copes well with writing small files, but at the "ISO" speed unexpectedly drops to the level of its predecessor.

Reading files is the bastion of 3.5 "drives, which is hard to reach for 2.5" models. The difference is especially noticeable when reading large files in the ISO template, but here the picture is somewhat disturbed by the Seagate 7200.3, which demonstrates a very good result for a 2.5 "disk. We have seen the same speeds relatively recently on 3.5" disks with platters not 320 GB for each, but a little less. For many people, disks of that generation still work very successfully in computers.

Curious are the results of two 2.5 "Western Digital drives - they are practically on par, the high rotational speed of the 320 GB Caviar Black is successfully compensated by the higher recording density of the 500 GB Caviar Blue.

Copying within the 3.5 "partition is still a little faster. True, the effect of the firmware affects: Seagate 7200.11 (and with it, unfortunately, 7200.3) turns out to be very sensitive to file size and loses on the ISO set to all Western drives Digital.

We see the same dependence of the speed of Seagate drives when copying from partition to partition. As a result, Western Digital drives outright win this round. Pay attention, if 3.5 "Caviar Blue leads on large files, then with a decrease in size 2.5" Caviar Black catches up with it and, on the smallest files, bypasses.

PCMark 2004

Now let's compare the performance of hard drives in PCMark test suites, starting with the oldest one, which came out as early as 2004. With its help, the hard disk performance indicators are taken in four characteristic modes: "Windows XP Startup" displays the access to the drive while the operating system is loading, "Application Loading" demonstrates disk activity when sequentially opening and closing six popular applications, "File Copying" evaluates the work hard disk when copying a set of files and, finally, "General Usage" displays disk activity when running a number of common applications. Based on the data obtained, the final drive performance index is built.

Each test is performed ten times, and the average results are used as the final ones.

2.5 "drives are worse than their 3.5" counterparts when booting Windows XP, and the Seagate Momentus 7200.3 and WD Caviar Black have almost the same results.

But the firmware algorithms strongly affect the loading of applications. As a result, WD Scorpio Black successfully bypasses 3.5 "drives, while the Seagate 7200.3 gives way not only to them, but also to the Hitachi 7K200, with its platters of only 100 GB each.

On copying files, we again see the total superiority of one company.

The situation with "typical use" almost repeats everything that we saw during the loading of applications: WD Caviar Black outperforms 3.5 "drives, while Seagate 7200.3 lags behind them.

The final score is quite eloquent: 2.5 "WD Scorpio Black and 3.5" Caviar Blue share the first two places with an almost equal score, while Seagate Momentus 7200.3 loses the battle for third place to the 3.5 "7200.11 series disc. Pay attention to the last place of WD Scorpio Blue.Nevertheless, the rotational speed of the platters means a lot, and if it is able to compete with faster models in file operations or server load, then when used as a system disk, WD Scorpio Blue loses even to models with more than two times lower density.

PCMark 2005

The next in our series of tests will be PCMark05 - an updated version of the previous package. Please note: instead of "File Copying", the "File Write" mode is now used (accordingly, the speed of not copying, but the creation of files is estimated), and the "Virus Scan" mode has also been added, which measures the performance of the hard disk during such a common operation as scanning files in the system for viruses.

As in the last time, we carried out each test ten times, and used the average results as the final ones.

The results of these three tests correspond in terms of the alignment of forces to those of the previous version, so we will not dwell on them, but go straight to the new tests.

In scanning for viruses, a substantial part of the work is clearly carried out in operations with the buffer memory, so the Seagate 7200.3 successfully uses some part of its firmware and leaps forward with a huge result. The second place Western Digital Scorpio Blue was also a surprise, despite the fact that its "black" 2.5 "brother rose only to the fourth place, leaving behind Seagate 7200.11.

And here, in contrast to the "FileCopy Test", the discs lay down almost in accordance with the sequential write speeds. True, the Seagate Momentus 7200.3 practically caught up with the 3.5 "WD Caviar Blue drive.

However, the new tests did not affect the final alignment of forces: the same two Western Digital drives are ahead, pursued by Seagate 7200.11.

PCMark Vantage

Well, at the end of this part of testing, we present the results obtained in the latest version of this package - PCMark Vantage. Compared to previous versions, it has become much more extensive in the number of modes, plus more relevant, both in terms of a set of modes, and because it is aimed at use in the Windows Vista operating system. The methodology is still the same - each test is performed ten times, and we use the average results.

Well, briefly about subtests:

Windows Defender- a mode in which the hard disk operates under a multi-threaded load, one of the streams of which is file scanning;
Gaming- this mode emulates the behavior of a drive under load typical for computer games;
Photo Gallery- the performance of the drive is evaluated when loading images from the photo gallery;
Vista Start Up- emulates the behavior of the drive when booting the Windows Vista operating system;
Movie maker- performance is assessed under load typical for video editing;
Media Center- The drive finds itself in a situation that develops when the user is working in Windows Media Center;
Based on the data obtained, the final index of the drive's performance is usually built.

The change in the operating system and the application used had a dramatic effect on the balance of power based on the scan results. Now Seagate 7200.11 is in the lead in this test, and WD Scorpio Black and Seagate 7200.2 are in second and third places, respectively. The new Seagate 7200.3 has already moved to the penultimate place.

Players will surely like the new 2.5 "drives: the WD Scorpio Black copes with such a load better than other competitors. However, the Seagate 7200.3 is also more than good - it performs absolutely on equal terms with 3.5" drives and significantly outperforms drives on platters of the previous generation. ...

But photographers are still better off using large 3.5 "hard drives. The best in this test out of 2.5", Seagate 7200.3 - and it loses to its older brothers quite significantly, and 2.5 "drives Western Digital, whose firmware is clearly disliked such a load, and at the very end with a huge lag.

3.5 "drives also handle Windows Vista slightly better than their compact counterparts, although WD Scorpio Black sticks closely to them. But Seagate 7200.3 has gone to the very end, losing both to less dense drives of the previous generation, and WD Scorpio Blue with its 5400 rpm

This test is always a little strange in its results: in the production of films, the best in it are not discs with the maximum linear speed, as one might expect, but with short response times. So this time, 2.5 "disks won a convincing victory, and the first place went to WD Scorpio Black. Curiously, the old Seagate 7200.2 took the second place, and the 7200.3 went into fourth, leaving WD Scorpio Blue ahead with its 5400 platters. rpm

This load is very sensitive to caching. This time the Seagate Momentus 7200.2 turned out to have the most successful algorithms - judging by its results, which significantly exceed linear speeds, most of the work took place in the cache. The new 2.5 "7200 rpm drives are also quite good, taking the second (Western Digital) and third (Seagate) places.

And one more test, where very much is decided by a low response time on reading. WD Caviar Black is naturally in the lead, followed by two old 2.5 "disks with 7200 rpm, and the new Seagate 7200.3 went almost to the very end.

New system, new applications ... Yes, the balance of power has changed markedly. Now we have one clear leader - Seagate 7200.11, and the losers are WD Scorpio Blue and Seagate 7200.2, all the rest showed very similar results.

The overall results of this test are quite peculiar: the first place went to the Seagate 7200.11, which was not very bright before, and the old Seagate 7200.2 came in second. As for the heroes of our review, Western Digital Scorpio Black came in third, and Seagate Momentus 7200.3 - fourth.

Defragmentation

And one more small test of performance, but this time as close as possible to real conditions - on the speed of defragmentation. A very fragmented disk system was created on a 32 GB partition of a certain disk, from very much "mixed" and scattered files of music, videos, games and programs. A sector-by-sector copy of this disk was saved and, as needed, is copied to the tested hard disks. The disks under study are connected to the SATA controller of the motherboard, the operating mode of which (AHCI / Standart SATA) we control from the BIOS of the motherboard. The console version of the Perfect Disk 8.0 defragmenter is launched on the computer and the start and end times of the defragmentation process are recorded. Thus, each disk is tested twice - on a controller with AHCI support and without it. You can read more about such testing in dedicated article.

So, the test results. Unfortunately, for reasons compelling for us, both 2.5 "drives with 100 GB platters (Seagate 7200.2 and Hitachi 7K200) could not take part in it.

Based on the results, the defragment speed is approximately equally dependent on both response times and linear speeds. As a result, WD Scorpio Black is very close to the leading WD Caviar Blue, while WD Scorpio Blue is slightly behind them. Seagate drives are very noticeably inferior (they are one third slower!) To Western Digital, and the new Seagate Momentus 7200.3 has gone to the very end.

Energy consumption

At the end of the review, let's estimate the power consumption of the drives. You can read more about how testing is carried out in the article “ Methodology for measuring power consumption of hard drives", It remains for us to add only a list of specific operating modes of disks, in which we measure power consumption, to what is stated in it:

Start- the current consumed by the drive at the moment of its start (spindle spinning) is measured;
Idle- there are no calls to the drive, but it is in an on and fully ready-to-use state;
Random Read & Write- the power consumption of the drive is removed when it performs random read and write operations;
Sequential Read & Write- the power consumption of the drive is estimated for sequential read and write operations.

Let's consider each mode separately. Since in our testing 2.5 "drives consuming only 5 V lines and 3.5" drives operating simultaneously from 5 V and 12 V collide, we will talk about total power consumption in all cases. In addition, for the same reason, the starting currents will only be compared for 2.5 "models.

As for the current needed to start the hard drive, here 2.5 "drives with 7200 rpm showed a very moderate appetite - they all fit into one ampere, which means that they should not have problems when working in external drives when powered. from two USB ports.Of course, it makes sense to install such fast drives only in eSATA drives in order to take full advantage of their advantages, but this is a topic for a separate conversation. ) Western Caviar Blue 500 GB won in this test, but the same Seagate Momentus 7200.3 comes close to it.WD Scorpio Black is a little more demanding, but still, we repeat, all drives in this test are quite good.

At rest, 2.5 "drives with 7200 rpm still consume slightly more than drives with 5400 rpm. The difference is really very small, 0.2-0.3 W, and in the case of the Hitachi 7K200, it is even one hundredth watt, which is less than the measurement error.

Notice how much the 2.5 "drives win over 3.5" drives. The consumption of the latter (and hence the heating) is more than four times higher! For compact servers and compact home systems, this means 2.5 "drives require much less cooling.

At read and write operations with arbitrary addressing, 2.5 "drives with 7200 rpm also do not greatly surpass their counterparts in power consumption at 5400 rpm. Thus, the Seagate 7200.3 performed almost on a par with WD Scorpio Blue one of the most "economical" drives even in its class, although it still falls short of the level of the latest Seagate models with a rotational speed of 5400 rpm platters (for example, look at Seagate Momentus 5400.5 results on two of the same 160 GB platters), but this is understandable - a little bit, but still you have to pay for high speed. It is very likely that low power consumption is generally the strategy of modern 2.5 "drives from this company, for which they pay with far from the best speed characteristics.

The faster WD Scorpio Black also has more power consumption. The difference with its direct competitor Seagate 7200.3 is 0.4 W for reading and 0.5 W for writing - that's the price for speed, expressed in more power consumption for powerful electronics and fast heads. However, in our opinion, the board is quite adequate.

Compared to desktop disks, the gain of 2.5 "models is no longer as great as in idle state - it is reduced to two times. Nevertheless, when choosing a disk subsystem, we recommend that you do not forget that larger 3.5" drives do not have any one, or two or more plates, and their consumption will be even higher, and even the choice of "economical" models with rotational speeds of 5400 rpm will not change the situation so much (but the response time of such models will already be noticeably longer).

On sequential operations, the Seagate 7200.3 demonstrated the best speeds, for which it naturally paid off with more power consumption. Under such loads, it is the most power hungry 2.5 "drive participating in today's testing, lagging behind the WD Scorpio Black by about a third of a watt. The" payment "for high rotational speeds of the platters is the same - about 0.5 W. The gain has not changed either. 2.5 "drives for desktop models - the difference in consumption is about two times. We say "about" because we are trying to make comparisons by averaging all models for each form factor.

Summarizing

So how did the next generation 2.5 "hard drives on 160 GB platters spin at 7200 rpm perform?

Compared to disks of the same form factor, but with a lower platter speed, they are obviously faster. Even the high recording density of 500 GB Western Digital Scorpio Blue only in some cases allowed it to move up from the last place, and then mainly due to a very successful firmware. It cannot catch up with its direct competitor, Western Digital Scorpio Black. As for the difference in power consumption, it is not that great and is about 0.2 W when idle and 0.5 W when working. Naturally, we are talking about models with electronics and actuators similar in efficiency. If, for some reason, set a goal, then you can pick up a couple of models in which a 7200 rpm drive will consume less than a 5400 rpm model.

Comparison of the heroes of our today's article with "desktop" 3.5 "disks clearly demonstrates that there are not so many advantages on the side of the latter. The lower cost of storing information and large volumes of disks are all the advantages. But the speed from the list of advantages is already gone: 3.5 "disks are ahead of their 2.5" counterparts only in linear speed, that is, on operations with large files (moreover, these files must not be fragmented yet), in all other cases the response time is lower 2.5 " drives allows them to successfully fight and often outstrip their big brothers. Even Western Digital Scorpio Blue with 5400 rpm was not that far behind, and Western Digital Scorpio Black can be considered the winner in the total results of all tests. So you shouldn't think that using a 2.5 "disk in a laptop or computer somehow severely limits the speed capabilities of its disk subsystem. At most, operations with large files will take a little longer, but in everyday work such a computer may even be slightly faster than with a large 3.5 "hard drive. Well, in terms of power consumption (and, accordingly, heating), we are not even talking about competition: 2.5 "drives are twice as economical in operation and four times as efficient in their absence.

In conclusion, a few words about each model, especially since they showed a very different character. Seagate Momentus 7200.3 turned out to be one of the most modest drives in its class in terms of power consumption, while its linear speeds are currently the best in the 2.5 "drive class (we do not take WD Velociraptor and SAS drives into account - they have a different field of application) Unfortunately, this is where its advantages end: it has far from the most successful firmware and slow heads, as a result of which it often lost even to its predecessor from the Momentus 7200.2 series. it successfully leads in most tests (it was especially successful in server loads.) To be honest, this disk has no serious drawbacks, and I don't want to find fault with trifles - the first pancake, contrary to the saying, came out of Western Digital far from being lumpy.

We are still waiting for Fujitsu and Hitachi drives and hope with might and main that the announcement of the Seagate 7200.4 with 250 GB platters will cease to be paper-based.

Check availability and cost of 2.5-inch hard drives

Other materials on this topic

First 2.5 "500GB drives
Overview of six 2.5 "hard drives with a capacity of 320 GB
Intel X25-M SSD: first acquaintance

Just a few days ago, I was looking for a new hard drive for all the myriad megabytes that are stored on my computer. I went shopping, I had to compare and analyze something. The current state of affairs in the storage market has changed, this prompted me to write this, one might say, generalizing review article. It doesn't matter whether you need more space for data or just want to replace an old, exhausted drive, the question of buying a new HDD is sure to appear for everyone ...

NOTE: We will touch upon only those that are important for us - ordinary users, without going deep into the technical "dregs".

Time does not stand still, everything changes, including in the information storage industry. Old market leaders are replacing ...

There is no particular difference between HDD manufacturers (in terms of product quality), but if we single out a hierarchy among them, then today the leaders of the hard drive market are undoubtedly Western Digital (WD) and Samsung. It is the products of these companies that account for the least number of calls to the service center and complaints from users. Next come Fujitsu, Hitachi and Seagate. Moreover, the greatest number of problems is observed today with Seagate drives (judging by my personal practice and information from other specialists from service centers. You can easily verify this yourself. Just open google, and enter something like "Seagate problem" or " Seagate is not detecting drive ”, there will be plenty of results ...). If we summarize everything according to the first point (manufacturer), then today the most successful purchase is models from Samsung or WD. These are the most hassle-free drives.

The next parameter on the list is volume.

A profitable purchase of a hard drive is determined by the formula:

price / number of gigabytes ... or in other words - the cost of one GB.

If you do not need a lot of disk space, then you can ignore this point. Just buy a disc of the small size you need. But if you want as much space as possible for as little money as possible, then take this formula seriously in order to get as much as possible for as little as possible. Prices vary from store to store, but on average today 1.5TB WD drives and some 2TB models are good buys in the light of this formula (not all 2TB models are equally cheap today, many are over 6,000 in retail).

Important technical data ...

Now we got to the main point.

A hard disk, or rather, its mechanical part, has its own resource. As a rule, it is used up in 5 years, therefore, after this period, it is recommended to replace the drive. there is a possibility of its sudden failure. Above all, the motor (which rotates the shaft with the plates) and the magnetic head unit are subject to wear. The motor wears out over time and the head unit loses its positioning accuracy, resulting in errors. One of the main “aging” factors is temperature, or rather, its drop. Therefore, nothing prolongs the "life" of a hard drive like its operation in normal temperature conditions. The reason for the heating is the hard drive itself. The heat is generated by the positioner coil of the magnetic head unit and, of course, the heat dissipation depends quite strongly on the rotational speed of the plates. Moreover, the more intensively the hard drive works, the more heat it emits.

BUT! The heat dissipation problem can be solved by installing a disc with a reduced rotational speed of the platters! The most common today are drives with a rotation speed of 7200 rpm. But there are drives where the number of revolutions of 5400 or 5900 per minute, while their heat dissipation much lower(I would say twice) than the models with 7200 rpm. You might argue that if you slow down the rotation speed, the performance of the disk suffers. I will say this: if you look at specific tests, then the performance of discs with reduced rotation speed is usually lower, but only by a few percent. In practice, this means that you will not notice any difference between 7200 RPM and 5400 or 5900 RPM models. However, much lower heat dissipation and much lower drive noise speaks in favor of the reduced rotational speed. More precisely, there is practically no noise in them. Fortunately, the "fashion" for the production of such "green" discs, ie. with reduced heat generation among manufacturers continues, so there is no shortage of “green” ones. WD CaviarGreen, Samsung EcoGreen etc. Disks of these series just have low heat dissipation and power consumption.

I chose the first one - WD CaviarGreen... The reason for this was also the fact that these disks consume less current during spin-up, i.e. the disc may spin more slowly during start, but the peak load on the engine is significantly reduced. As you know, the engine wears out mainly during the unwinding of the plate pack, and not when it simply maintains movement. Another of the "chips" of these green discs can be called shaft fastening not only from below, but also from above. This minimizes the effect of vibration on the disc (for example, from a high-speed DVD drive).

For clarity, I recommend taking a look at this one. animation from the WD website .

But these particular disks have one single thing. BUT:

With the new operating systems Windows Vista and 7, the drive works right away, but in order for it to work normally with Windows XP, you need to perform some steps, which are described on the official website

I cannot but note that I was very happy right after the installation, and which I cannot but rejoice now.

* Disk temperature during operation, slightly above room temperature (outside the window +28 +30).

* Noise, paradoxically, is completely absent! Even during heavy loads, the disk is not audible at all.

* Capacity ... For some, perhaps 1.5 TB will not be enough, but nevertheless it is quite a decent amount. Finally, there is a place to store FullHD videos from my camcorder!

http://www.master-hard.com/

Good afternoon, dear readers, today I want to touch on this topic, what is the spindle speed of a hard disk, how to determine it, and understand which speed is good and which is not. I think it will be interesting for novice engineers of data storage systems, since the performance of storage systems will depend on the understanding of this topic, namely how much your disk array can carry on itself, without brakes and accidents. At the time of the beginning of my career, I did not have enough of this information in the Russian-speaking segment and that everything was structured, so I ask you to love and favor.

Spindle speed

Each of us wants all of its services and equipment to work quickly, and to put in their storage systems, not everyone has the opportunity to stick fast SSD drives, and the only solution is hard drives. When evaluating the performance of hard drives, the most important characteristic is the data transfer rate. At the same time, a number of factors affect speed and overall performance:

• The first factor is through which interface you connect the hard drive, the choice of SATA / IDE / SCSI / SAS, it is logical that each of them has its own data transfer rate. SCSI can transfer data up to 80 megabytes / sec, IDE latest versions can support data transfer rates up to 133 MB / sec, SATA up to 6 Gbps, SAS up to 12 Gbps.
• The size of the cache or buffer on the hard drive. Increasing the buffer size increases the data transfer rate.
• Support for NCQ, TCQ and other algorithms to improve performance
• Disk volume, the more data can be written, the more time it takes to read the information.
• Density of information on the plates.
• And even the file system affects the speed of data exchange.

But there is another factor affecting the performance of the screws and that is the spindle speed of the hard drive. If you take two identical HDDs, but with different spindle speeds, then you will see a difference in performance, and at what a significant

HDD device

Let's take a look at the physical structure of hard drives in order to understand what parts it consists of.

• Reading head
• Solenoid drive
• Spindle
• Plate
• Nutrition
• Connection interface

• Read / write head
• Permanent magnet
• Positioner rotary frame
• Head-block preamplifier switch

What is a spindle

Winchester is a set of one or more sealed disc-shaped plates covered with a layer of ferromagnetic material and readheads in one housing. The plates are driven by a spindle (rotating shaft). The platters of the hard disk are fixed to the spindle at a strictly defined distance. When the platters rotate, the distance should be such that the read heads can read and write to the disk, but do not touch the platter surface.

The spindle motor must be able to rotate the magnetic platters steadily for thousands of hours for the disk to function properly. Unsurprisingly, sometimes disk problems are related to a jammed spindle, and are not errors in the file system at all.

The motor is responsible for the rotation of the platters, and this allows the hard drive to run. Due to the lack of contact, the hard drive can be rewritten on average 100 thousand times. Also, the operating time of the disk is influenced by the hermetically sealed case (hermetic zone), due to which a space is created inside the HDD case free of dust and moisture.

This is what the spindles look like; for each manufacturer, they may look slightly different in appearance. These are the spindles from Samsung screws.

or here's another selection.

spindle speed, or in Russian, the spindle rotation speed, determines how fast the plates rotate in normal hard disk operation. It is measured in RpM, that is, revolutions per minute. The RpM speed will depend on how fast your computer will work, namely how quickly the computer can receive data from the hard drive.

How many times have I seen brake laptops that had 4 GB of RAM each, there was an Intel core i3 or even an i5 processor, but there was a damn hdd with a rotation speed of 5400 rpm, and it was a complete rub, such screws need to be pulled out immediately and installing ssd otherwise it was not possible to work

The time it takes for the head unit to go to the requested track / cylinder is called seek latency. After the read heads move to the desired track / cylinder, we must wait for the plates to rotate so that the desired sector is under the head - these are rotational latency time. And this is a direct function of the spindle speed. That is, the faster the spindle speed, the less the rotation delay.

The total seek time delays and rotation delays determine the speed of data access. In many programs for estimating the speed of hdd, this will be the access to data time parameter. You can read more about s.m.a.r.t indicators by following the link on the left.

The influence of the spindle speed of the hard disk

Winchesters come in two formats LFF and SFF, in a nutshell, one has a format of 2.5 inches, and the other 3.5. The 2.5 format most often goes either in servers or in laptops, and the second also in servers and ordinary system units.

If you look at the average speed of standard 3.5 "hard drives, then this is a spindle speed of 7200 rpm. The average half-turn time (Avg. Rotational Latency) for such drives is 4.2 ms. These drives usually have an average seek time of about 8.5ms, which gives an average data access time of about 12.7ms.

There are discs that have a rotational speed of the magnetic platters of 10,000 rpm. This reduces the average spin delay time to 3ms. The Raptors also have smaller diameter plates, which made it possible to reduce the average search time to ~ 5.5 ms. The resulting average data access time is approximately 8.5 ms.

There are several SCSI models (such as the Seagate Cheetah) that have a spindle speed of 15,000 rpm, and even smaller platters. The average Rotational Latency is 2ms (60 sec / 15,000 RPM / 2), the average seek time is 3.8ms, and the average data access time is 5.8ms.

Discs with high spindle speeds have low seek times and rotational latency even with random access. Hard drives with a spindle speed of 5600 and 7200 have lower performance.

At the same time, with sequential access to data in large blocks, the difference will be insignificant, since there will be no delay in accessing data, therefore it is recommended to regularly defragment hard disks.

At 2.5 colleagues, the speed also jumps from 5400 to 15000 rpm.

Determine the speed of rotation of the spindle of the hard disk

Here I will not open America for you, the spindle speed of the hard disk is determined, not just that simple, but very simply, there are two options. If you have the opportunity to physically look at the label located on the disk, then you can see this RPM in these examples is 7200RPM.

If you have a hard disk in a device or server, then we will look at the spindle speed of the hard disk in special programs, of which there are a lot, I can advise

Of course, the higher the spindle speed, the faster the disc, but there is also a downside to the coin, as the rotational speed of the plates increases, the disc heats up more and becomes noisier. This can be offset by technology, WD IntelliPower, which reduces power consumption and noise by reducing spindle speed. And the loss of performance is partially compensated by optimizing caching algorithms. A similar technology in HGST is called CoolSpin in order to reduce power consumption.

conclusions

I think you are once again convinced that, if possible, you need to switch to solid-state drives, since they have many advantages.

• Do not heat up
• There are no mechanical parts, if it falls, then nothing will happen to it
• The speed is many times faster
• More durable
• But, unfortunately, they have a smaller volume and are still more expensive, although this line is decreasing every year.

pyatilistnik.org

The main characteristics of hard drives - spindle rotation speed

Every year, the IT industry strives to increase speed in almost every component of the system unit. Computing speed, access speed, transfer speed - all this is increasing quarterly.

Not spared these speed changes and the field of storage media - hard drives. Here, the spindle speed of the hard disk has been constantly increasing and is increasing, which, in turn, affects the speed of access to data, the speed of writing and the speed of reading information.

Hard disk spindle speed

The spindle speed of the hard disk is the main characteristic of the hard disk, which directly affects the resulting performance of the device.

At the moment, for desktop versions of systems, three types of hard drives are popular in terms of spindle rotation speed - these are 5400 rpm, 7200 rpm and 10,000 rpm.

Naturally, in addition to advantages over smaller brothers, faster hard drives have disadvantages for the consumer - they are higher price, higher noise level and higher power consumption. As for the noise level, this is a rather controversial and insignificant point. Against the background of the overwhelming majority of noisy coolers for conventional systems, it may not be noticeable at all.

What does a higher spindle speed give to increase the speed of the system? Firstly, it is the speed of random access to any information on the hard disk. Naturally, the time it takes for the read head to reach a certain place on the hard disk platter, in the case of 5400 rpm. - drops significantly compared to 7200 rpm or 10,000 rpm. The situation is the same with the write speed.

Testing hard drives

Now let's look at all this with illustrative examples. At ixbt.com, we tested four hard drives, which differ significantly in parameters. The result is very revealing graphs that clearly show the superiority of higher spindle speeds.

So, the models for testing:

• Western Digital Green - WD10EZRX (5400 RPM)
• Western Digital Blue - WD10EALX (7200 RPM)
• Western Digital Black WD1002FAEX (7200 rpm)
• Western Digital VelociRaptor WD1000DHTZ (10,000 rpm)

We are mostly interested in three models with different rotational speeds.

Now let's take a look at the test graphs:

1. Reading speed and writing speed

As you can see from the test graphs, the Green-series with 5400 rpm falls behind everyone else. Particularly clearly you can see the gradation of the spindle rotation speed, precisely on the graph of the access time when reading.

2. Random access

Again, there is clearly a noticeable advantage of 7200 rpm hard drives. above the "low-speed" Green-series, and on one of the graphs they are close to Veloci Raptor with 10,000 rpm.

When testing hard drives in most applications, as well as in gaming loads, the same lag of the Green series is observed.

Outcomes

After all this, it remains only to sum up small results. Of course, not all tests failed on the Green's side with 5400 rpm, since the spindle speed does not solve everything, but the vast majority of tests turned out to be sad for the Green disc. In any case, you should not focus on one characteristic. For the same copying of files, it is necessary to increase the recording density, and not to increase the speeds of the rotating elements of the drive. So the complexity of the analysis of characteristics remains the only correct decision when choosing a hard disk. It is also important to remember about the main characteristic of a hard drive - it is the amount of HDD memory, because "whatever one may say", the main task of a drive is to store information.

we-it.net

Choosing a hard drive. Which hdd is more reliable, which brand?

Good day.

A hard disk drive (hereinafter referred to as HDD) is one of the most important parts of any computer or laptop. All files of the user are stored on the HDD, and if it fails, then file recovery is quite difficult and not always feasible work. Therefore, choosing a hard disk is not an easy task (I would even say that you cannot do without a certain amount of luck).

In this article, I would like to talk in "simple" language about all the main parameters of the HDD, which you need to pay attention to when buying. Also at the end of the article I will give statistics based on my experience on the reliability of certain brands of hard drives.

And so ... You come to the store or open a page on the Internet with various offers: dozens of brands of hard drives, with different abbreviations, with different prices (even though the volume in GB is the same).

Let's look at an example.

Seagate SV35 ST1000VX000 Hard Drive

1000 GB, SATA III, 7200 rpm, 156 MB, s, cache memory - 64 MB

Hard drive, Seagate brand, 3.5 "(2.5 is used in laptops, they are smaller. PCs use 3.5" drives), 1000 GB (or 1 TB).

Seagate hard drive

1) Seagate is a hard drive manufacturer (about HDD brands and which ones are more reliable - see the very bottom of the article);

2) 1000 GB is the volume of the hard disk declared by the manufacturer (the actual volume is slightly less - about 931 GB);

3) SATA III - disk connection interface;

4) 7200 rpm - spindle rotation speed (affects the speed of information exchange with the hard disk);

5) 156 MB - the speed of reading from the disk;

6) 64 MB - Cache memory (buffer). The larger the cache, the better!

Internal hard drive.

Hard drive specifications

Disk volume

The main characteristic of a hard disk. The volume is measured in gigabytes and telobytes (before, many did not even know this): GB and TB, respectively.

Important note!

Disk manufacturers "cheat" when calculating the size of a hard disk (they count in decimal and a computer in binary). Many novice users are unaware of this calculation.

On a hard disk, let's say the manufacturer's declared volume is 1000 GB, but in fact, its real size is about 931 GB. Why?

1 KB (kilo-byte) = 1024 Bytes - this is in theory (how Windows will count);

1KB = 1000 Bytes is what hard drive manufacturers say.

In order not to tire with calculations, I will say that the difference between the real and the declared volume is about 5-10% (the larger the disk volume, the greater the difference).

The basic rule when choosing an HDD

When choosing a hard drive, in my opinion, you need to be guided by a simple rule - "there is never a lot of space and the larger the disk, the better"! I remember a time, 10-12 years ago, when a 120 GB hard drive seemed huge. As it turned out, it already began to be missed after a couple of months (although then there was no unlimited Internet ...).

By modern standards, a drive of less than 500 GB - 1000 GB, in my opinion, is not even worth considering. For example, prime numbers:

10-20 GB - will take the installation of the operating system Windows7 / 8;

1-5 GB - the installed Microsoft Office package (most users need this package, and it has long been considered basic);

1 GB - approximately one collection of music, such as "Top 100 Songs of the Month";

1 GB - 30 GB - this is how much one modern computer game takes, as a rule, for most users, several favorite games (and there are usually several users on a PC);

1GB - 20GB - space for one movie ...

As you can see, even a 1 TB disk (1000 GB) will be busy quickly enough with such requirements!

Connection interface

Winchesters differ among themselves not only in volume and brand, but also in the connection interface. Let's consider the most common ones today.

Hard drive 3.5 IDE 160GB WD Caviar WD160.

IDE is once a popular interface for connecting multiple devices in parallel, but today it is already outdated. By the way, my personal IDE hard drives are still working, while some SATA drives have already gone "to the next world" (although I was very careful with both of them).

1Tb Western Digital WD10EARX Caviar Green, SATA III

SATA is a modern interface for connecting storage devices. Working with files, with this connection interface, the computer will be much faster. Today, the SATA III standard is in force (bandwidth is about 6 Gb / s), by the way, it is backward compatible, therefore, a device that supports SATA III can be connected to the SATA II port (although the speed will be slightly lower).

Buffer size

A buffer (sometimes simply called a cache) is memory built into the hard drive that is used to store data that the computer accesses too often. This increases the speed of the disk, since it does not have to constantly read this data from the magnetic disk. Accordingly, the larger the buffer (cache), the faster the hard drive will work.

Now on hard drives, the most common buffer is 16 to 64 MB in size. Of course, it is better to choose the one with the larger buffer.

Spindle speed

This is the third parameter (in my opinion) that you need to pay attention to. The fact is that the speed of the hard disk (and the computer as a whole) will depend on the spindle rotation speed.

The most optimal rotation speed is 7200 rpm (usually the following designation is used - 7200 rpm). Provide a certain balance between the speed of operation and the noise (heating) of the disk.

Disks with a rotation speed of 5400 rpm are also quite common - they differ, as a rule, in quieter operation (there are no extraneous sounds, rattling when moving the magnetic heads). In addition, such discs heat up less, which means that they do not need additional cooling. I also note that such disks consume less energy (however, is it true that an ordinary user is interested in this parameter).

More recently, discs with a rotation speed of 10,000 rpm have appeared. They are very productive and are often installed on servers, on computers with high demands on the disk system. The price of such disks is quite high, and in my opinion, it makes little sense to install such a disk on a home computer ...

Winchester manufacturers. Which hdd is more reliable, which brand to choose?

Today, the sale is mainly dominated by 5 brands of hard drives: Seagate, Western Digital, Hitachi, Toshiba, Samsung. It is impossible to say unequivocally which brand is the best, as well as to predict how long this or that model will work for you. I will continue to base myself on personal experience (I do not take any independent ratings into account).

One of the most famous hard drive manufacturers. If we take it as a whole, then we come across both successful parts of discs and not very good ones. Usually, if in the first year of operation the disc does not begin to crumble, then it will serve for a rather long time.

For example, I have a Seagate Barracuda 40GB 7200 rpm IDE drive. It is already about 12-13 years old, nevertheless, it works great like new. It does not crack, there is no rattle, it works quietly. The only drawback is that it is outdated, now 40 GB is enough only for an office PC, which has a minimum of tasks (in fact, approximately this PC in which it is located is now busy).

However, with the beginning of the Seagate Barracuda 11.0 version, this disk model, in my opinion, deteriorated a lot. Quite often there are problems with them, personally I would not recommend taking the current "barracuda" (especially since many of them "make noise") ...

Now the Seagate Constellation model is gaining popularity - it costs 2 times more expensive than the Barracuda. Problems with them are much less common (probably still early ...). By the way, the manufacturer gives a good guarantee: up to 60 months!

It is also one of the most famous HDD brands on the market. In my opinion, WD drives are the best choice for PC installation today. Average price with rather good quality, problematic drives are found, but less often than Seagate.

There are several different "versions" of discs.

WD Green (green, you will see a green sticker on the drive case, see the screenshot below).

These disks differ, first of all, in that they consume less energy. The spindle speed of most models is 5400 rpm. The data exchange speed is slightly lower than that of 7200 drives - but they are very quiet, they can be installed in almost any case (even without additional cooling). For example, I really like the silence, it's nice to work at a PC, the work of which is not audible! In terms of reliability, it is better than Seagate (by the way, there were not very successful batches of Caviar Green discs, although I myself have not met with them personally).

The most common WD discs can be installed on most multimedia computers. They are something in between the Green and Black versions of the discs. In principle, they can be recommended for a regular home PC.

Reliable hard drives are probably the most reliable of the WD brand. True, they are the noisiest and hottest. I can recommend it for installation on most PCs. True, without additional cooling it is better not to install ...

There are also brands Red, Purple, but to be honest, I don't come across them so often. I can't say anything specific about their reliability.

Not a very popular brand of hard drives. There is one machine at work with this Toshiba DT01 disc - it works fine, there are no particular complaints. True, the operating speed is slightly lower than that of the WD Blue 7200 rpm brands.

Not as popular as Seagate or WD. But, to be honest, I have never come across failed Hitachi disks (due to the fault of the disks themselves ...). There are several computers with similar disks: they work relatively quietly, but they get warm. Recommended for use with additional cooling. In my opinion, one of the most reliable, on a par with the WD Black brand. True, they cost 1.5-2 times more than WD Black, so the latter are preferable.

Back in 2004-2006, the Maxtor brand was quite popular, even a few working hard drives remained. In terms of reliability - below "average", a lot of them "flew" after a year or two of use. Then Maxtor was bought out by Seagate, and there is nothing more to tell about them.

Greetings to all, dear readers and visitors !!! 🙂

We continue the series of notes about hard drives, and today I would like to draw your attention to such an HDD parameter as the spindle rotation speed, on which the data plates are actually mounted. Is this parameter important?

Of course…

A hard drive is a complex electromechanical device. It combines mechanical and electronic parts. Mechanics provides rotation of a disk or a package of disks (if a hard disk is built on several platters - as a rule, these are large-capacity disks), provides ultra-precise positioning of the head over the platters ... Electronics - reads, writes and changes data on the disk continuously at a very high speed.
These two components must work together and be as reliable as possible. To a greater extent, reliability depends on the mechanical part - about 80-90 percent.

One of the main components of disc mechanics is the engine. It must have a mandatory parameter - the ability to maintain a fixed spindle speed for a very long time.

The spindle must rotate at the specified speed. Today there are several types of discs, if you look at the number of revolutions of the plates:

5400 rpm- Mostly used in laptops, because low speed means higher reliability and lower power consumption. And this is critical for laptops. Also found in desktop PCs in the so-called "green" (eco-friendly) hard drives, which are distinguished by record low energy consumption.

7200 rpm- 90% of all hard drives. They are mainly used in desktop PCs - they are not critical to power consumption and they need high performance. And the productivity is the more, the more revolutions the spindle makes (this is one of the factors). We can say this is the golden mean between speed and reliability.

10 or 15,000 rpm- The most productive disks, but also the most unreliable ... High RPM leads to strong heating of the platter - and the threat of data loss is enormous! And of course - mechanical wear ... This factor, as they say, has not been canceled. 😉

So, the most acceptable today are discs with a rotational speed of 7200 rpm platters. Heating is acceptable and performance is better than 5400 rpm drives. And the price is reasonable. High-speed disks are usually very expensive, and the performance gain is not justified at all, due to the low reliability of the media.

And who needs a hard drive where it is dangerous to store information?

P.S. I remind you that very soon my new project will start, which will be entirely devoted to such an important issue as information security. Details: